Words: Wendy Ide

Anyone who has endured Christmas With The Kranks, Deck The Halls or this year’s big fat Yule log of a movie, Christmas With The Coopers, will know that the most wonderful time of the year does not always extend to the cinema. But despite the fact that many festive films are about as appetising as regurgitated eggnog, the Christmas movie marathon is as much a part our yuletide celebrations as turkey, tinsel and seasonal affective disorder. Everyone has their own personal list of festive favourites to watch in a mulled wine coma, and these are mine:

10. Rare Exports (2010)
This barmy Finnish film taps into the creepy subtext of an elderly man who breaks into children’s homes and ramps it up to genuinely unsettling levels. Unflinchingly macabre, Rare Exports takes place in and around a reindeer slaughterhouse, and is shot with a distinctive colour palette that blends candy cane primaries with the murkier tones of mud and dried blood. The bonkers plot involves a covert mining operation to unearth the cryogenically preserved original Santa Claus and sacks full of grisly atmosphere and kidnapped children.

9. Holiday Inn (1942)
Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and an Irving Berlin score which introduced the song White Christmas to the world: could this film be any more festive? The answer is yes, when it was more or less remade 12 years later in twinkly technicolor as White Christmas. Although the later film is more widely watched, the original is fresher, more charming, and thanks to Astaire, markedly lighter on its feet.

8. Elf (2003)
This film works best if you approach it with the same joyfully credulous naivety that Will Ferrell brings to the role of Buddy the Elf. If you start to dwell on the fact that Zooey Deschanel hooks up with an overgrown infant in tights, it all starts to feel a bit wrong. Still, it’s one of the funniest of the Xmas movies, so let’s just ignore the icky sex stuff.

7. Home Alone (1990)
Seriously, how cute was Macaulay Culkin back then? He plays Kevin, the naughty but resourceful kid who is inadvertently left behind by his family, in this child friendly home invasion movie. Think a Loony Tunes version of Straw Dogs.

6. Arthur Christmas (2011)
Ever wondered just how Santa delivers all those presents to every child in the world in just one night? Or what happens to all the mince pies, carrots and sherry left out on Christmas Eve? This delightful Aardman animation answers all this and more, in the tale of Father Christmas’ well-meaning but inept son and a little girl who didn’t get a present.

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Henry Selick’s stop motion film, based on a story by Tim Burton, is a gruesome delight. Jack Skellington, the pumpkin-headed king of Halloweentown stumbles upon Christmas and decides to rebrand it with his own inimitable stamp. Cue a Christmas morning to remember for children whose presents are full of maggots and dismembered teddies.

4. Die Hard (1988); Die Hard 2 (1990)
Is there any man alive who has worse luck at Christmas than John McClane (Bruce Willis)? First he has to rescue his estranged wife from a deranged German terrorist. Then two years later, he has to step up again on Christmas Eve when a rogue army general holds an entire airport hostage. Still, nothing says Xmas like kicking all kinds of ass and blowing stuff up.

 

3. Bad Santa (2003)
This is the kind of film that swigs down its Christmas spirit from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag, then burps in your face. Billy Bob Thornton stars as the self-loathing safe-cracker who poses as a department store Santa in order to pull off a yearly heist. His extra-curricular activities include beer and cheap liquor, pursuing demeaning sexual encounters with large-boned ladies, swearing and, occasionally, picking fights with the plastic donkey in the nativity display.

2. Meet Me In Saint Louis (1944)
OK, Vincente Minnelli’s musical is not, strictly speaking, a Christmas movie. But it has been co-opted into the Christmas canon for one very good reason: one of the many songs is a festive classic. And what a song that is. Judy Garland surely never looked more beautiful as she does when she sings the gorgeously melancholy Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

1. Scrooge (1951)
The ultimate version of the much-filmed Dickens tale of a miser redeemed by the spirit of Christmas, the film is notable for its luminous black and white photography and for Alistair Sim’s gloriously misanthropic Scrooge. Yes, it’s sentimental and sanctimonious, but this handsome classic is a total joy.